domika.app
> For comparison, Home Assistant’s Nabu Casa service costs several times more.
Undercutting Home Assistant's added services on price doesn't feel particularly elegant since this is what they use to fund HA development.
Then don’t cause major versions casually, and charge a reasonable upgrade fee when more value is delivered with a major upgrade.
I get that you have expenses, and things like servers cost money-but you’re not providing the server here.
But we’re also a small group of independent developers, and it’s a pretty complex app. We’ve already spent over a year building it, and we can’t keep putting in time and money unless it at least pays for itself. We’re still figuring out whether there’s enough interest to support it long-term. If not… well, that tells us what we need to know.
Home Assistant isn’t exactly mainstream, so we’re not expecting millions of users. It’s simple math — either a small number of people pitch in a bit to keep it going, or the project dies.
I don’t know if 1.5 USD/month (or 3 USD for the family plan) is a big stretch — it’s about the cost of a cup of coffee. And if you work in tech and earn something like 50 USD/hour, that’s 3–4 minutes of your time. If the app saves you even that much effort each month, it’s probably worth it. If not — fair enough!
Put your pricing up front - don't waste my time.
IMO you should add it to the top of the page. You don't need to explain to people why you charge money. Don't be afraid to state your offering - you are running a business.
I get that you want to charge different people different amounts of money, but maybe test whether they are actually turned off my $2/month, or if they still make it far enough through the funnel to get whatever regional discount helps them over the line.
A good comp might be Tessie [0] -- They are loved by users even though the Tesla app can do a lot of the same things for free.